Understand
by Celesma
Summary: "More than anything else, Knives just wanted Vash to understand him." After the final battle, the twins have a conversation in the desert. One-shot, animeverse with a manga reference.


**Understand**

The ancient suns orbiting over the face of the desert planet cast a pale, lurid glow on the figures of the two boys as they trudged onward through the sand, stretched their fiery shadows over the length of the endless, unblemished expanse. Fine layers of sand coated their faces like dust, and while the younger of the two twins wiped at his face constantly, the older took the irritant in stride, setting off at the same even, undisturbed clip he'd begun the very first day they'd landed on this dusty rock.

It had been a hard journey, and not just because of the physical obstacles, such as the desert's tendency to vacillate between scorching heat and freezing cold, the depths to which the twins were forced to plumb in order to find drinking water, and the very real risk of encountering a carnivorous sandworm or a pit of quicksand. Vash had been irrevocably changed by the events that had transpired in space: Steve's execution for a crime he did not commit, the shooting deaths of Joey and Mary, Rowan's forcible ejection into space, and, of course, the horrifying cremation of Rem Saverem, the twins' caretaker and the closest thing Vash had ever had to a mother. As a result, the light of life and happiness had departed from his eyes, replaced by a gloom that could manifest as either cold apathy or smoldering anger.

Knives couldn't make sense of his brother's melancholy, so instead of trying to, he decided the only cure was to help make him see things through the same optimistic lenses that he himself did.

Because more than anything else, Knives just wanted Vash to understand him. For the last few months he'd been trying to bring him around to his way of thinking, without even a quantum of success. At first he'd tried to appeal to Vash's emotional nature – one of the few things the older twin could always count on when it came to discussing abstract concepts like love and morality – by explaining to him the inner workings of the Last Run, the horrific descriptions of which he'd encountered during his exhaustive research on plants in their final weeks on the Alpha SEEDS ship.

"Do you know what the humans did to our sisters, Vash? The Earth's heart turned to frost in response to their pollution and waste, and in order to survive, they pushed the plants to limits far beyond what they were capable of." His voice became low then, the first released sounds of pain in it. "All the details were preserved in their historical records. I read about how our sisters screamed in agony, their hair turning completely black. Then, their bodies were ripped in hal – "

"Shut up!" Vash had hissed, shoving his brother away, shoving _reality_ away. "You're lying! You'll say anything to make me go along with you!"

Later, when he'd been forced to concede that Knives was telling the truth – not because Knives was his _brother_ and brothers always believed each other, but because Rem had once told him that humans had sometimes abused the plants back on their home planet – he had quickly gone on to add: "But Rem said those acts were illegal, condemned by the global government. We _can't_ judge all of humanity based on the actions of a few." At that moment Knives wished dearly that Rem Saverem might be resurrected, so that he might personally slaughter the bitch for so utterly corrupting his precious brother.

His next few attempts to enlighten Vash concerned logic and reason. Knowing his brother, he didn't expect this to have much of an effect on his delusional thinking patterns, and he was right. No amount of talk of how spiders had to be sacrificed in order to spare the butterfly could dissuade his brother from the intellectual anathema that Rem had introduced. Nor, it seemed, could it induce Vash to behave towards Knives with even a modicum of civility.

Today Vash seemed even more moody than usual. While Knives enjoyed a broad spectrum of moods and emotions since the Fall – he'd coined the term himself, as the fate of the dregs of the universe was an apt visual representation of that old adage about pride before the fall – Vash seemed trapped in a perpetual state of anger and misery. The thought briefly flitted through Knives's mind that his brother might be depressed, but he quickly put it down. After all, _he_ was here, wasn't he? The bond that they shared couldn't be broken by temporary setbacks like this. Okay, so it had been three months now since he'd seen Vash smile, but still –

"When are we supposed to get to the next supply ship, Knives?" Vash's voice was plaintive, irritable.

"Soon." Knives's purposeful stride didn't flag for even an instant. "I promise."

"It's been weeks now. Do you even know what you're doing?"

"Of course I do," Knives said, and now his brother's carping attitude was beginning to infect his own demeanor. "What kind of a stupid question is that?"

Vash shrugged. Then: "Maybe we're just wandering around in circles. Maybe we'll just die out here." Pause. "I hope we do."

His older brother's vague concern for Vash's mental health solidified upon hearing those words, but that emotion was quickly replaced by anger. "Stop being a whiny brat, Vash. We're going to be fine. The last ship gave us enough food and water to survive on for mon – "

Vash's voice resurfaced in a scream. "How can I be _fine,_ Knives? How can I ever be happy again when you killed them all? When you killed _her?"_

Knives stopped walking. He turned to look at Vash, his expression suddenly mild. They'd had this conversation many times before; it was beginning to become routine for them. He waited expectantly as Vash spoke his next words, words he'd delivered so many times that it seemed they had begun to form permanent grooves in the older twin's brain:

"I hate you, Knives! I hate you! I don't even know why I'm still following you around." Underneath the garish light imparted by the suns, Vash's eyes appeared to be flaring red in anger. "I don't want to be your brother anymore!"

Knives blinked slowly, swallowed, prepared to once again be the voice of reason in the midst of his brother's madness –

– and burst into tears.

Vash's eyes widened in shock, and he started towards his brother; but before he had taken more than two steps Knives bolted, abandoning his pack of supplies as well as all vestiges of dignity, and the wind carried his discordant cries of emotional pain over the desert. He ran and ran, determined to reach the end of this godforsaken desert, and then maybe there'd be a drop off into nothingness like in that strange poem Rem had once read to them, and he could suicide off the edge into the inky void, the way he'd seen Rowan disappear, screaming –

After ten minutes the older twin began to tire, and without a care as to where he landed, he suddenly let his knees buckle beneath him and send him toppling to the dusty ground. He lay there for some time, whimpering, before finally pulling himself into a sitting position. The gesture served to help make his thoughts more rational again, if no less distressed.

_I've been so strong up to this point_, he thought, his knees knocking together as he tried to suppress the hiccupy sobs that threatened to escape from the prison of his chest. _So far, I've been able to keep myself together. If he ever saw weakness – anything that made it seem as though I doubted myself – then I would lose him forever. So why **this** – why **now** –  
><em>

"Kn-Knives...?" Vash drew near to where Knives was sitting, breathing hard from exertion, before stopping only a few feet away from him. He carried both of their packs in one hand. "You shouldn't just run off like that... you might get hurt."

Knives kept his face hidden from Vash. "Like you care. You just said you wanted me dead."

"I'm sorry," Vash murmured, guilt evident in his face. "I didn't mean it."

A long silence followed then, occupied only by the soft sounds of the older brother's half-muffled sobs. Eventually Knives lifted his face from his hands, turned to look at Vash with sorrow and resentment in his eyes.

"You know, Vash, I'm not some bloodthirsty maniac," he said. "You think I enjoy killing? I'm only doing what needs to be done for us to survive."

Vash went immediately on the offensive, his previous concern for his twin vanishing. "You sure seemed to be enjoying yourself as you watched those ships burning up in the atmosphere," he pointed out shakily.

"What, I can't be a little happy now that I know those parasitic wretches are gone, that they'll never threaten you or me or our sisters again?"

"Even if the humans needed our sisters to survive, what makes you think they would have used us like that? We can't even terraform like they can, Knives."

"Humans created plants, Vash," Knives said patiently, as though he was trying to explain a simple concept to a particularly slow child. "They're the ones who designed the plants to be able to terraform. How do you know they wouldn't have begun some kind of experimentation on us in order to have us develop the same abilities?"

"Th... that's ridiculous!" Vash drew back as if Knives had slapped him. "Rem... Rem wouldn't have let that happen!"

"Yes, because the crew had such a _great_ track record when it came to protecting us," Knives countered, rolling his still-watering eyes. "What about Steve? I don't recall anyone ever doing anything about his despicable behavior other than giving him verbal warnings – and that includes your precious Rem." The older plant shook his head with conviction. "No, they'd have definitely come up with some excuse to begin experimenting on us once we were of age."

"So you killed them first," Vash said, disgust etched in his voice.

"I didn't even do _that,"_ Knives said, sighing and wiping his eyes. When Vash looked at him, stunned, he went on: "Destroying the humans wasn't really my intent – at least, not right in the beginning. How could I have predicted that Rowan would be insane enough to kill Steve and Mary?" His eyes narrowed, as though he could still behold a clear picture of that episode in his mind, even though it had occurred months ago. "When I came to Rowan and Mary about framing Steve, it was a sort of... test, I suppose. I wasn't even the one to suggest that we use rape as the basis for Steve's incarceration. That was all Mary's idea." He snorted in disgust. "But then – even _then_ – I wasn't sure that I'd actually kill anyone."

"What... what about Joey?" Vash said, but much of the fight had drained out of his body, and he spoke in hollow, muted out tones.

"I did kill him," Knives conceded. "But only because he was too stupid to live. Rowan was a dangerous lunatic. There was no reason for him to doubt his decision to eject him into space."

"If he doubted himself, that's only because of what Rem said," Vash replied, and the force of his sudden anger upon remembering their deceased caretaker helped restore some measure of strength to his voice. "So why didn't you kill her, too?"

"Because you loved her." Knives felt the onset of tears – goddamned traitorous _tears_ – again, and he wiped vainly at his eyes. "More than you ever loved me."

Vash visibly deflated. "That's not true, Knives..."

"Well, it's true _now,_ isn't it? Every day you tell me you hate me. Every day you tell me you don't want to be my brother. Even though all I did was try to protect our family, you continue to spit in my face. How do you think that makes me feel, Vash?"

His own eyes spilling over with sorrow, Vash slowly closed the distance between himself and Knives – that great expanse that could perhaps be bridged in terms of physical space, but never in the minds of either twin, where it really mattered. "I don't think I'll ever understand you, Knives," he said, placing a hand on the older plant's unreceptive shoulder. "But, we'll never stop being brothers."

"No," Knives sobbed, wrenching himself out of Vash's grasp. "It's no good. As long as things are like this between us... we'll always be separated by this gulf. We can never really be brothers again."

Still crying, Knives trudged away through the sand, with no clear idea of where he was heading – only knowing that he wished he could vanish into the twin suns that burned overhead, as the lightly dusted tendrils of wind that caressed their cheeks disintegrated in the unforgiving waves of light and heat.

* * *

><p>That had been the last time Vash had ever seen his brother break, give vent to the sloughs of despond he had been nursing within his soul since the Great Fall. Now, a hundred and thirty years later, he was witnessing it for a second time. The two plants were holed up in the shadow of an enormous outcropping of bedrock: appearance-wise, it amounted to little more than an eyesore that disturbed the smooth, uniformly flat surface of the desert landscape, but it had saved both their lives when the sandstorm accosted them out of nowhere.<p>

The tent that Vash had managed to hastily erect around them also provided them with some measure of relief from the noise of the storm, which had continued to rage for the last three hours. Knives's exposed chest, which was swathed heavily in bandages and riddled with bullet holes, rose and fell slowly as he struggled to take a breath that didn't automatically set his nerves on fire. His face was pale and drawn, and his jaw remained inordinately tight, but this had less to do with the pain and more to do with his stubborn opposition to the silent tears of anguish that continued to stream from his eyes. Vash, for his part, knelt over his brother's helpless and broken body, cleaned and dressed each wound as tenderly as if he hadn't been the one to pump Knives full of lead almost a week ago.

"Why, Knives?"

They were the first words he'd spoken to his twin ever since their climactic battle. While the question seemed simple, it in fact encapsulated a small universe of meaning, of questions that could never otherwise be uttered: _Why did you torment me with the Gung-Ho Guns? Why did you condemn entire villages of innocents to die in the desert? Why did you force Wolfwood to betray me?_

_Why did you make me take a life?_

"Because..." Knives spoke in a thin rasp, as unaccustomed to conversation as Vash was. "I wanted you to understand me."

"You wanted me to understand you?" Vash was darkly amused. "I thought you wanted me to suffer eternally."

"No. That was the aim of Legato Bluesummers. He always hated you for denying your true nature." Knives grimaced as another spasm of pain wracked his legs. There wasn't a single part of him that didn't hurt, but Vash had gone to brutal lengths to ensure that he wouldn't be up and walking around any time soon. "I'll admit, I was still furious about what you did in July, so I certainly wasn't _against_ the idea of you being in pain... but overall, the idea was to instruct. To show you, once and for all, the depths of the human race's depravity."

Vash thought about that. He recognized that, in many ways, he had been unfair to Knives all this time. While Knives had made concerted efforts to reason with Vash and ease the rift between them, Vash had never reciprocated in kind. Instead, he had retreated into a shell of anger and hatred, lashing out whenever Knives attempted to reach him, before finally turning the modified Colt – and later, the angel arm – on him. In a flash, he discerned that the conception of the Gung-Ho Guns had been a last-ditch effort to reunite with Vash in brotherhood.

In the end, however, both twins had been concerned only with how _their_ point of view was the correct one. Neither had ever really attempted to understand the thoughts and feelings of the other. Vash decided to talk about something else, while still remaining on this subject.

"You know, back when we were kids, first wandering the desert, you always seemed so strong and self-assured," he said, lifting one of the bandages on his brother's chest and applying a generous coating of antibiotic ointment before replacing it. "But that was just a mask, wasn't it? Inside, you were just as scared as I was."

"What do you think you're doing, Vash?" Knives's voice pierced him like a dagger. Vash winced, as though he could feel its incisive point being driven into his flesh, ripping out muscle and chipping away at bone. "You think I'll change my mind about the spiders just because you suddenly decided to start playing therapist?"

Vash could clearly see that his brother didn't intend to leave _that_ particular door open to him. On the contrary: he had slammed it in Vash's face, then triple-bolted it and engaged the chain lock. Vash didn't back down right away, however.

"I wish you'd been more open with me about your feelings then," he said slowly, sadly. "Maybe I wouldn't have hated you so much."

To this Knives had no words. He transferred his gaze to some point beyond Vash's line of sight, blinked the remaining tears out of his eyes. After a few minutes had been spent in this manner, he drew a deep, weary breath.

"Back there," he murmured, indicating the site of their final battle, his voice colored with quiet resentment. "You were going to kill me."

Vash saw no point in lying to his brother. "I was thinking about it."

Knives spat the next words out. "Then why didn't you?"

"I don't know." Vash was quiet as he continued to minister to Knives. "After all, the world would be a better place without you in it." He didn't say this with malice, or bitterness, or even regret. He just said it. "I guess it's because, in the end... I still think there's a chance to save you."

"A chance to save me," Knives repeated incredulously. The irony was so monumental that he didn't know whether to laugh uproariously or knee Vash in the balls. Perhaps he would do both at the same time. As he laid there stolidly on his back, trying to decide, Vash replied:

"Yes. I want us to be brothers again. True, I don't think I can ever forgive you for what you've done, both to me and the humans..." Vash turned away, and for a moment his face was cascaded in shadow. "You killed a lot of people, Knives. People that I loved, just as much as I love you."

An expression of hurt astonishment crept into Knives's face. "That's a betrayal, Vash."

"Why?" Vash said, returning his gaze mildly. "Love isn't defined solely by bonds of flesh." When Knives continued to stare at him in shock, his voice grew gentle. "I'm not saying I _don't_ love you, Knives – far from it. You're my brother. You're irreplaceable."

"Irreplaceable, and yet you still thought about killing me."

Vash ignored his brother's sarcasm. "Yes."

"You know, that isn't fair, Vash." Knives's voice increased in pitch until it came to suspiciously resemble that of a petulant child, but he paid no heed to that fact. "No matter how bad things got, I never for a moment seriously considered _killing_ you. I never thought there wouldn't be a day when you finally came to take my side in all this, to understand me once and for all. But _you,_ the self-professed pacifist, weren't willing to extend me the same courtesy – me, your own brother!"

"True." Vash took hold of another bandage, paused in the act of removing it. "But then, I'm not the one who's taken millions of innocent lives, either. I think I've earned the right to have a little more leeway in my decisions than you." Without warning, he ripped the entire bandage off at once. Knives snarled as a white stabbing pain raced up his spine, causing all of his limbs to involuntarily shudder.

_Ow! You did that on purpose, you bastard!_

If Vash heard his telepathic accusation, he gave no indication of it. "Not to mention, I'm no longer that indebted to Rem's ideals. I'll try to honor them whenever and however I can, but I can't go on living in a pleasant fantasy, either." He averted his eyes, which had grown glassy with sorrow. "Wolfwood taught me that much."

"So glad to see that you've come to _some_ of your senses," Knives said, his words couched in the familiar language of sarcasm. Vash turned back to look at him, regarded him with an inscrutable expression.

"You know, Knives, in a way... you succeeded. I finally _do_ understand you. The principle guiding the Gung-Ho Guns – how they sacrificed their own humanity in exchange for power – and their utter willingness to slaughter their own... in the end, my best friend even betrayed me. Humanity has always been capable of terrible evil."

"Then – why – "

"Let me finish," Vash said, laughing softly. "I understand your point of view, Knives. I just don't _care."_ He found a new bandage, wrapped it around the injured area with considerably more gentleness than when he had removed it. "Because for every evil you show me, I'll show you ten acts of kindness. For every ruthless murderer, I'll show you a man willing to give the clothes off his back to a complete stranger. For every greedy con artist, I'll show you a single mother working a thankless job day and night to support her children." His smile deepened, as though prompted by the recollection of a fond memory. "For every Legato Bluesummers you show me, I'll show you a Nicholas D. Wolfwood."

Knives sneered, unimpressed. "Spare me your platitudes, brother."

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice, Knives," Vash said. "You've had over a hundred years to make your point. It hasn't worked. Now it's my turn to make _you_ understand _me."_

Silence again came on the heels on his statement. Although the twins' conversation thus far had been conducted in stops and starts – and with more than a little hostility from Knives – it fulfilled a kind of hunger in Vash that he had been unable to satisfy for almost his entire life. As a result, there was a disparate cheerfulness in his voice as he said:_  
><em>

"It might have been more merciful to kill you, actually. If I can actually convince you to see things my way, I'm not sure you would ever be able to live with yourself."

_Oh, it would have been more merciful to kill me, all right, but not for that reason,_ Knives thought vindictively. Aloud, he said: "And I suppose you'll have me interacting with that filth?"

Vash frowned at him. "Don't call my girls that."

"What?"

"The Insurance Girls. Meryl Stryfe and Millie Thompson. They're the ones who've stuck by me through thick and thin for the last few years." He smiled adoringly down at his twin. "They'll be taking care of you while you recover from your injuries."

"...You must be joking."

"Not at all," Vash said. "I think you'll like them, Knives. Millie has an excellent bedside manner, and Meryl's a great cook." His face suddenly took on a wistful bearing that Knives didn't like at all. "Really pretty, too."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Knives growled.

"What's what supposed to mean?"

"You said that one of them was..._ pretty."  
><em>

"Well, yes." Vash was beginning to blush now. Knives suddenly felt terrified. "Because it's true. Meryl is very pretty."

"Tell me, Vash," he said through clenched teeth, trying to refrain from openly screaming and making his condition worse. "Are you... and it..." He couldn't finish the question.

"What's with this _it_ business?" Vash returned, ever the master of deflection. "It's _she,_ Knives. _She."_

"Just answer me!" Knives snapped, his entire body as tense as rocks. He knew he could be advancing the onset of a coronary or something equally life-threatening, but such things paled in comparison to the possibility of his brother having relations with a spider.

"Maybe, maybe not." Vash crossed his arms, his eyes filled with childish mirth. "I don't kiss and tell, you know!"

In truth, he had not even told Meryl how he felt about her – the possibility that he might not return from his battle had prevented him from doing so – but Vash couldn't help provoking Knives a little, if only to try and rekindle a little of their brotherly chemistry. Knives, however, overreacted upon hearing this answer.

"You... you... I'll kill you! How_ dare_ you – defiling yourself with a lowly human – " Blood vessels stood out underneath his skin like thick cords of rope as Knives forgot himself, attempted to verbally lash his twin with what was left of his rapidly weakening voice. "When I regain control of my limbs, I'm – going to beat your – miserable hide into – " A feral yelp of pain suddenly issued from his throat when he tried to rise, inadvertently reopened the wounds in both his shoulders.

Instead of expressing the appropriate amount of remorse for being a hopeless moron and getting his brother hurt – _again_ – Vash laughed. "Uh-oh. Does Knivesy-wivesy need to go beddie-bye again?" He reached into the first aid kit, removed a particularly powerful sedative that he had used to keep Knives quiet and obedient while he worked on stitching up the wounds that his bullets had made upon their high-velocity entry into the older plant's body.

"No! You keep that needle away from me!" Knives hissed, but his strength was no more than that of an infant, and he could only fume helplessly while Vash took his hand in his own, located a suitable vein in his weakly resisting arm. Knives snarled as Vash proceeded to inject half of the needle's contents into his arm, humming an infuriatingly merry tune as he did so.

The effect was instantaneous. Knives's entire body became limp, like a rag doll, and he closed his eyes in sudden, forlorn weariness. Vash gave his brother's hand a reassuring squeeze, then reached back into his kit for a needle and a thread that he could use to restitch the shoulder wounds. After a moment, on a sudden impulse, he whispered:

"Hey, Knives..."

"Hm...?" Knives was fast approaching unconsciousness: he looked up at Vash with bleary eyes.

"I'm sorry for all the times I said I hated you."

Knives's reply was so faint that he had to strain to hear it. "...S'okay, Vash..."

"I love you."

"Love you... too... now shu'up and let me... sleep..."

Outside the tent, the storm continued to rage – flinging up dunes of sand and sending gales of wind crashing against the rock like enormous tidal waves – but for the moment, Vash's heart was still, as completely at peace as when it had been just him, and Rem, and a young blond boy who looked just like him but couldn't be more different, and they had learned to delight in differences rather than let them drive them apart. He felt with a sudden surge of assurance that those days were very close at hand again – sans Rem, of course, but then she was always still there with him, in his heart – and that this time, he could get things _right._ He could have a brother again.

Vash smiled. He could only hope that Meryl didn't kill Knives before they reached that landmark.

_The End_

* * *

><p>AN: I apologize if young!Vash seems a little OOC. I imagine that he _does_ lighten up towards his brother at some point after the Fall, but that it wouldn't necessarily be a quick or easy thing. I _do_ think it's reasonable to suppose that he developed some kind of depression after all of the terrible things he'd just been through, even if it was just temporary.

The poem that Knives recalls Rem reading to him once is "The Edge of the World" by Shel Silverstein.

Also, the ending here has _finally_ been changed (I've been wanting to change it for a year now), because what I had before was, uh... really stupid. *refers you to helpful reviewers* Still not great, but better than what I had, I think.


End file.
